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I think my favourite characters were the children. I loved their 'take no crap' attitude to the many awful situations that befell them during the course of the memoir. Probably my favourite moment involving Brian was when he and Jeannette took on the neighbourhood bullies with an improvised catapult. That bit was fun.

But at other times it was a tough read. Particularly involving the dad's alcoholism. My own mother wasn't nearly as bad as all that, but she had her moments when she'd just get absolutely smashed, and it genuinely scared me. Honestly the kids coped with the whole situation a whole lot better than I could.

Also, I suspect the dad comes off initially worse in most people's estimations but the mother was, I think, nearly or just as bad. She was sitting on land that could've been used to support her family, and she didn't. Having said all that though, both parents came across very sympathetically for me. That final sequence in New York was pretty sad, with the father dying.

I kinda called Maureen going off the rails at some point, mainly because she was conspicuously out of focus for a lot of the memoir. I'm glad she seemed to be doing okay in California.

I feel strangely ambivalent to both the mother and father. In some ways, they have excellent qualities and have both come out with some amazing quotes. Things that I would be proud to have said as a father myself.

On the the other hand though, they are quite possibly the worst parents you can imagine. There is no excuse for letting a three-year-old do the cooking, drown an entire bag of cats, allow your daughter to be thrown out of a moving car and not even notice.

Ahh no this was a smurfing depressing book and I do strongly dislike the parents. Selfish. Ridiculously selfish. Their children had to suffer and it was never their fault in their eyes.

Yes I dislike them. No I don't have empathy for them. They were bad people. When the grandma tried to assault the grandson, they told them to get over it. When the Uncle did it to the main character, mother didn't do anything about it. Then the dad basically throws his daughter to the wolves and she nearly got assaulted there too.

smurf those people. Glad the kids got out but holy smurf.

Let's not have a depressing book again. Specially when i'm also super smurfing depressed. Not a good combo.

It was well written though. I just hated that all they went through with such horrible parents.

It would have only helped for a time. I dunno if you've been poor. And I mean REALLY poor, not just "poor" by modern standards. There's a mentality you see when you grow up that way, from poor people. When they come into money, they use it on frivolous fun trout. Never something they need. It's basically, they know they'll be living hand-to-mouth regardless. Might as well have something nice, eh? Your circumstances aren't going to change, the only difference is you'll be covered for a month or two less than if you had saved it for necessities.

So I don't think Rose Mary selling her land and using it would have really benefited them in a meaningful way. Especially based on habits they had as a kid. They would have bought a new house or car or clothes, maybe. They would have been fed for awhile, sure. But they would have spent it all on stuff they didn't need, and they would have been dirt poor again eventually. Maybe not for a few months, but it would have happened.

And I understand I say this with scorn, and I'm not apologizing for that. I had parents who did that. OH FINALLY GOT SOME MONEY, instead of paying bills or buying your child more than one pair of pants, let's get a gaming system. OH GOT SOME MONEY, instead of paying off the bills you illegally took out in your child's name and tanking her credit, let's get iPads.

It's not that I think poor people don't deserve nice things or that I think they're poor because they make bad choices. But if you grow up in and around poverty, you begin to see a different way of thinking about survival and money.